The building first
9 Chapel Street is by SO-IL, the New York practice of Florian Idenburg and Jing Liu, working for the developer Tankhouse, and it is one of the few recent Brooklyn buildings that people name rather than describe. Fourteen stories and 27 residences on a freestanding corner, finished in 2024.
It stands at the point where DUMBO stops and Brooklyn Heights begins, which is a real edge rather than a marketing one: warehouses and cobblestone give way to brownstone blocks within a few hundred feet. Chapel Street takes its name from St. James at the corner of Jay Street, founded in 1822 as the first Catholic church on Long Island and the cathedral basilica of the Diocese of Brooklyn since. The tower looks over it.
The facade is why the building gets cited. SO-IL wrapped the tower in perforated anodized aluminum that ripples across every face, and three panel shapes, rotated and mirrored, produce the whole undulation. Up close the panels do a practical job, screening the terraces from the street while letting light and air through, which is what lets every residence in the building carry real outdoor space. It is the opposite instinct from most of the condo development going up around it, and one of the reasons the practice gets cited when people argue that new Brooklyn housing did not have to look the way most of it looks.
The apartment
Residence 11A is a duplex: 1,962 square feet inside and 1,444 square feet of terraces and loggias outside. The great room sits under nine and a half foot ceilings, with five inch white oak floors against exposed concrete, and six doors open onto a wraparound terrace with south, west and north exposures and two sheltered loggias. A further room off the great room closes in as an office or a fourth bedroom.
The kitchen is built around an oversized butcher block island, with honed white marble counters and Bosch appliances: integrated refrigerator, induction cooktop and wall oven. Upstairs are three bedrooms. The primary suite has a walk-in closet and dressing area and opens onto its own terrace facing Manhattan and the Brooklyn Bridge; its bath is green glass mosaic with a rain shower, a deep soaking tub, a double vanity and radiant heated floors. The other two bedrooms share a full bath with a pass-through mosaic shower and a third, south-facing terrace.
The building carries a fitness studio, a coworking lounge, a lobby with two elevators, a landscaped entry and ride-in bike storage. The listing is held by Behzad Amiri, Dan Chen and Noah Shapiro of the Amiri NYC Team at Corcoran, and 11A is one of the sponsor's final residences.
